One month. Playing every day. What have I learned?

• Pianos have 72 keys. That might sound obvious. But it’s more complicated that it sounds. Pianos have 72 keys but I only play 17 of them. 8 white keys to the right of ‘middle C’ – the middle key of the piano. And the 8 white keys to the left of them. And one black key (as part of a D chord). I don’t play the keys at the bottom of the piano and I don’t play the keys at the top. The reason for this is that the eight keys repeat. As do the black keys (of which there are seven). But in order to learn I’ve started with 16 and my muscle memory is starting to learn how to shape my fingers and move my arm for those 16 keys. Maybe by the end of the year, I’ll have played one of the other keys. But, for the moment, 16 keys is a lot less intimidating than 72. But if I want to stretch myself when learning, then I will have to… stretch myself and reach further.
• Chords are easy and hard. Just as you master one chord, you add a second and try and move between them. Then add a third and watch your coordination fly out of the window. But practice helps, and soon you’ve learned to move between three chords – and then you add a fourth and it takes even longer to practice as there’s a lot more movements between all four. There is a reason it takes a long time to master a piano and it’s entirely down to having too many chords. If we had fewer fingers it would be easier to learn as we’d have less chords.
• I’m not interested in classical pieces. Chopin? Borin’, more like…! But I do like film music and playing along with soundtracks.
• I’m left handed – but not what it comes to playing the piano. I’m still learning how to use my left hand, it’s not as instinctive as my right.
• There’s no one way to learn. I started the same day as my wife but we’ve both learnt how to play in different ways by following different training paths on the Simple Piano app. She’s now playing classical pieces, I’m playing along to pop songs. Neither approach is wrong but it does show how encouraging it is to be able to learn in a way that interests you. If I’ve followed her path, I might not have loved learning as much as I did. Same for her. The fact we can choose our own way to learn is a great feature of Simply Piano and one I would recommend to others.
• Most of all, I’ve learned I love playing the piano and want to try now and learn something from a soundtrack which will starts to challenge me to use both hands and which should be within my reach after one month. Something like this…

After 31 days I’m not a level 0 but…

C’mon! Some of these levels don’t even have the tune. You wouldn’t know it was Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. This should be called 3 levels of Twinkle Twinkle and “4 levels of plinkity plonkity look how fast I can move my hands no tune tinkling”.

One of the most useful videos I’ve watched about how chords work.

(I’m at level 1 but after 29 days of playing, I can understand level 8, something I couldn’t have done before starting).

I didn’t spot it right away, but I can’t help but hear it now. Every song on Simply Piano is a cover. 

It seems appropriate. Everyone using the app is covering the song too. But it does make it seem like it’s training me less to be a solo pianist and more to be playing Uptown Girl in a wedding band.

When I look at the keys I see the computer game, Tetris. There are serveral falling blocks and each block is a different shape. You can rotate the blocks, you make them fall faster or slow them back down, but every second, you’re trying to make the blocks fit together in harmony, in an unbroken straight line.

With the piano, I imagine my fingers as the blocks, there’s several shapes but with four fingers and a thumb there’s only a limited number of shapes I can make with them. Each one of those shapes is a chord, and if I can only move them around the piano, sometimes faster, sometime slower, I can make them all fit together in harmony.

Which sounds simple in practice, like Tetris. But harder and harder in practice as one mistake means it’s game over.

There are three pedals at the bottom of our piano. I know that one of them muffles the sound of the piano. We have this on at all times as we live in a semi-detached home, albeit one with thick walls, and we don’t want to bug our neighbour with our practice.

Some people would love to live next to piano wizard, Lang Lang. However, we are Clang Clang, and no one wants to live next door to that.

But I have no idea what the other two pedals do. One seems to make the piano sound echo-ey. I call it the Ghost Pedal as it makes the piano sound haunter.

The other one does…. nothing. I press it. Nothing. It doesn’t muffle. It’s doesn’t try and scare me. Nothing.

I could google the answer but it seems more fun to try and work it out myself, like it’s a rite of passage for all piano players. Until you work it out, you can’t call yourself a musician. And looking up the answer would just be cheating.

I’ve been watching a a lot of videos about learning to play the piano and this one, ahem, struck a chord.

As I’m following the Simply Piano app, I’ve not thought a lot about timing. 

1… 2… 3… 4

1……. 2…… 3

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Part of not thinking about timing is that I’m both not fast and too fast. I’m not fast, as I try and play pieces and can’t change between chords as fast as shown on the screen. I’m also too fast as when I practice on my own, I try and play as fast as I can rather than going slower and learning better technique.

I need to slow down to speed up.

Our piano is in the hall beside the living room. If I’m playing, I keep the living room door open so I can keep an eye on little three year old Wee TwinBikeRun when she watches her cartoons. However, in the last few days, every time I sit down to play, about five minutes after starting, she comes out of the living room, stares at me and then holds her hand our to take my hand. She then pulls me into the living room.

I may not be as melodic as I thought. Even a 3 year old is a critic!